Is there any program (maybe Thunderbird? I tried but I did not get it) that lets me download rss feeds and read them offline? Instead of trying to connect every once I try to read an rss?
My Linux at home is OFFLINE and downloading rss at university would be right if I could read them at home.
Did I miss any special configuration at Thunderbird?
Thank you.
adrian15
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I've been trying to work this one out for a while, and as far as I can tell the short answer is no...
The medium length answer is to use the "scrapbook" extension for Firefox as a way to take content for reading offline later - maybe if you mixed it with a Firefox based RSS reader, (eg sage) that would get you a long way towards the desired functionality, but you would still need to go through and choose which articles you wanted to store for offline reading, and which you didn't - this is what I end up doing most of the time. It works well, but is not as convenient as taking everything, and then choosing what you want to read later...
I've also heard a story that "mrpostman" http://mrpostman.sourceforge.net/ also has the ability to do offline RSS. Unfortunately, it needs the Java Runtime Enviroment (JRE), so its not very portable
So, the short answer, unfortunately, is nothing obvious. But if you find something that works, please do post it widely....
I use a PHP aggregator (the one built in to Drupal) to download my feeds. I also made myself a quick module to display my feeds in a plain format for me to read.
If I save the output of this module - I'd have a nice clean HTML file to read offline whenever I choose.
Oh, there's a screenshot in my flickr too: "Aggy" screenshot
The biggest benefit I get out of running my aggregator on my webserver is that I can catch everything in the quickly-updated feeds and not miss any important news that might have been knocked off. For example - I could come home from holiday and read all the news I would have missed.
Very nice. Some qns:
1. How does it get on with sites that don't offer up too much info in the feed (eg Guardian.co.uk), where you only get about six words, and then have to go through to the website to read the rest? Is it possible to configure it to display either the summary in the XML, or the actual website, depending on the users preferences (a la. Thunderbird's RSS viewer)
2. Is there any way to make this work for those of us that don't have servers?
Cheers,
Mark
There are some comments saying that it could leave files on the system thus making it not fully portable but I suggest that if true portability is a concern for you that you read what they say and possibly verify some of the statements stated here.
If it's not an issue you can download OperaUSB here.
I just realised you mentioned your Linux at home, you didn't mention you univerisity system whether its Windows / Linux. If it were Windows you can use OperaUSB without a problem but I just tried OperaUSB in Kubuntu Linux but it didn't work with wine
But the good thing is the mail folder can be used in Linux if you set a symbolic link to it, so it would be kind of a work around rather than a complete solution, but I hope it helps somewhat.
GreatNews (http://www.curiostudio.com/) is a fairly good RSS reader that is still under development, and I found out the other day when I downloaded the latest version that you could set it offline and view your RSS feeds later from the comfort of your offline computer at home (because GreatNews stores everything in a database).
All you have to do is put GreatNews online, update your RSS feeds, take it offline, take it home, and (because it is stupid) tell it to go offline again, and it's now time to read then RSS feeds... I'll fiddle with it a bit more, and may get around to writing a launcher for it if it needs one, and I get the time (I've got exams coming up in a few days).
Regards,
Peter